Lauren Gibbens Evaluation

The opening to our thriller was based around several thriller films, which previously, we’d watched and analysed. We linked in several key themes and ideas from a variety of genres, such as supernatural, psychological, comedy etc.

Some ideas were very stereotypical to thriller films, such as ‘the venetian blind effect’, which is featured heavily in film noir.

Monotone colours were used throughout and music which was “against the grain”, known as ‘parallel sound’. We used all of these effects in our thriller and some of our ideas were taken from the original ‘Psycho’ which is shot in black and white throughout. We considered that this brought an element of mystery to our opening sequence, by there being a slight unfamiliarity with black and white films, which are stereotyped as ‘old fashioned’ , for our target audience. We chose to target teenagers of our own age (15-19), who would be more familiar with watching a full colour HD modern film. By introducing something unexpected which entices instantly, we challenged “the norm” to try and portray the element of ‘thrill’, even after it’s been successfully watched to its conclusion. The monotone colours are also featured in our text for the opening credits, as well as dominating the majority of the films editing.

We went about selecting our target audience by producing a questionnaire and asking a series of questions. These included ‘What is your favourite thriller? Why?’ This also helped us to take ideas from existing successful thriller movies such as, ‘The Blair Witch Project’ and ‘The Grudge’, as well as ‘Psycho’ and ‘Woman In Black’, which we’d previously watched and analysed. We then decided as a group that we’d relate best to people of a similar age, as we’d know what was ‘scary’, or not (!) as the case may be, so we could adjust our thriller opening accordingly. People of our age like to say ‘I’ve watched that’ as we found out in our questionnaire, even if they didn’t enjoy it. Having selected our supernatural genre we decided that by making it seem unreal and dreamlike, more people may choose to watch it, as it’s not too scary. Feedback indicated that half the people may not enjoy being terrifed! In researching for our thriller we had asked if ‘thrillers’ were a popular type of film, and obviously the people who answered no, were less inclined to fit our target audience. These were younger members of the society in majority.

During the task, we improved our skills in using ‘final cut express’. In our preliminary task we weren’t very successful in using it, where the links appeared jumpy. We learnt how to add in transitions to ensure the clips run more smoothly. We have also learnt how to successfully make and produce our own music on ‘Garage Band’, and have recorded live vocals using this software. We used it alongside our images for our thriller opening. In comparison to our preliminary task, our thriller has been extremely successful as we have learnt many new skills with the software, such as adding text over a clip and cropping sections of a sub clip out, although this was not necessary on this occasion.

If our media production represents a particular social group, you could say that it represents teenagers, in the sense that it’s based around them. The main protagonist is played by Lauren Baxter, who represents a girl of a similar age to herself, i.e. late teenage. It represents a group in society that is perhaps classed as ‘weird’ or ‘abnormal’ so we considered that using the supernatural genre would be interesting. This representation of teenagers challenges the one commonly represented by the media, where teenagers can be stereotyped as being, lazy, yobs and aggressive, when as a matter of a fact, there are lots of subcultures in mainstream society which our character Lauren, happily falls into, including being delusional.

We looked at the Coen Brothers and their work with motifs and we decided that ours would be based around birthdays. We selected the very cynical sensation that a birthday would be spent alone, plotting the seventh murder of a family member. We informed our audience of this theme simply, but in more than a singular way, using a birthday card (handwritten), singing by Lauren herself, and music which we recorded live sung by myself, edited with an echo suggesting a very sinister mood and dark emotion.

Following group interest and research, our plot was based loosely around the seven deadly sins, which we decided that we could involve as a theme within our plot. Wrath, Pride, Lust, Envy, Greed, Sloth and Gluttony are the names in which these emotions are displayed and we decided to incorporate some of the more evil ones into our main character’s behaviour and mind-set. Additionally, we agreed to reverse the film, and put the ending at the beginning rather than ‘this is what happens and why’. We preferred to put the idea across of ‘this is the result of what’s happened, watch on to find out why…’. Alfred Hitchcock said that that the best type of thriller involves placing a normal person in an extraordinary situation. By using ‘normal’ costumes like pyjamas, at face view our character Lauren, was very normal, until placed in a mental home, an ‘extraordinary’ institution.

‘Levi Straus’, much like our own thriller, was based around one character. This idea, however, came with some disadvantages. Incorporating all the theories we preferred and wanted to include proved challenging when only using one person. However, by choosing to use the seven deadly sins idea, we were able to communicate with our audience by making our main character have seven split personalities. We used many different shots to represent a different side to ‘Lauren’, including a close up of her eyes and ear to suggest the relevance to ‘hear no evil speak no evil’ a famous quote credited to the three wise monkeys. We also used an out of focus shot when our character Lauren is standing by a door, almost ‘losing her mind’. This effect signified her body flipping out and not being in control of her actions or thought processes.

We challenged forms and conventions in our production of our thriller by selecting our main actor through a willingness to volunteer, rather than by audition. This was necessary due to budget restrictions. However, we identified ourselves positively with the makers of ‘Paranormal Activity’ also a low budget movie, not quite to our costs but which made a lot more money than its total finance spent. This gave us hope that ours may also be successful, should we choose to peruse our idea and launch it.

On reflection, we have identified certain improvements that could be made if we ever were to repeat our project, e.g. by daily updating the blog rather than weekly or monthly would help us to be consistent and achieve a more better final product in terms of detail. Additionally, making our film the traditional way around, from start to end would have enabled us to stick to Propps’ theory of stages of narrative and to relate his theory to our own work. Perhaps lowering the age range for our film would broaden our target audience, but due to the content and the potential content for a completed idea we decided to rate this film a 15 by the British Board of Film Classification. Propps also argued that there was a set of stock characters needed for a thriller which included a Villain, a Hero, a Dispatcher, a Princess and her father. Our thriller went against this idea as we only had the two characters and our protagonist; Lauren was the main focus of all the action. Criticisms of Propps’ theory was that it was very male dominated and living in a society which is now much more gender equal, we decided to fight that stereotype and base our own plot around a young, vulnerable female.

From this project we have learnt how to overcome technical problems and teach ourselves to use the editing programmes successfully. We learnt how to use transitions which made our clips run a lot smoother and gave the successful ‘dream- like’ daze required for our plot. We also learnt how to plan an idea, to stick to it, but also to make improvements along the way. The constant recording of our progress and updating of the blog was an excellent method of keeping on track with our filming and editing process. We learnt how to utilise perceived technical errors, such as not using a tripod when recording, to achieve special effects inspired by ‘The Blair Witch Project’. ’Paranormal Activity’ gave us the idea of filming our thriller by hand to maximise tension.  In conclusion, I have enjoyed the film making process very much and we, as a group, are very satisfied with our final product.